Ran in the Beat the New Year 5k at 11:30 p.m. in Sugarhouse park in Salt Lake City. Before the race Aaron and I played games with his sisters and their husbands, Ashley and Matt and Emily and Adam. I fueled up on pizza, peanut M&Ms, soda, raspberry sticks, and apples. At least I resisted the pie and other sweets I could have been puking at the race. And I resisted eating after 9 pm so as to have a chance at a settled stomach for the race. Aaron and I talked Ashley, Emily and Adam into coming to the race with us even though they weren't registered; we figured they could just bandit run it and enjoy the unique exercise of racing to the New Year. Matt volunteered to stay home with the sleeping kids in the home. We all left for the race at 10:45ish and got to Sugarhouse park around 11:10. 20 minutes to race start. Jogged to the race number pick-up and were handed some nice long sleeve tech t-shirts and a race number the same as everyone else: 2010. Upon learning that everyone had the same race number and there were no more race pins so the volunteer handing out numbers just told us to put it in our pocket, I knew it was not really a "timed" race but more of just a low budget fun run. All the better! No pressure! They did claim to give a prize for overall winner and COLDEST runner though, so of course I was after the win and Aaron was after the coldest runner award. We jogged the 1.25 mile lap of the course together to warm up, took our outer layers off (which included everything except short running shorts for Aaron), and jogged the other half mile to where the race start was. The race was basically two and a half laps around Sugarhouse park. Aaron looked AWESOME in his bare feet, bare chested outfit in the 20 degree darkness. He got lots of comments about how crazy/awesome he is. Right as the race was about to start, my Garmin froze. Aaron quickly took his Garmin off and gave it to me but when the race started I pushed the wrong button anyway and didn't start the timer until about a quarter of a mile in when I realized I had pushed the wrong button. So I just forgot about the pace and time anyway and just ran. There were 4 or 5 men that went out ahead of me, most of them shirtless. I settled into a comfy pace and really enjoyed the energy and uniqueness of the event. Finished the race with 12:12 to spare before the New Year which means I ran a 17:48 for the 5k. Grabbed our camera and took a pic of Aaron finishing. I got the overall female trophy and he got the Coldest runner trophy! We celebrated for a couple of minutes and I jogged back to run in with my sister-in-laws, Ashley and Emily. We hooted and hollered our way into the New Year while running in together. Such a FUN way to bring in the New Year!!! Happy New Year Everyone! | 